Hi everyone,
I'm very happy to announce the release of the FotoSketcher 4.0 Release Candidate. After months of development, bug fixing (a lot!) and refinements, I feel this version is solid enough to share widely before the official 4.0 launch.
For the very first time, FotoSketcher runs natively on MacOS - on both Apple Silicon (M1 to M5) and Intel-based Macs.
Whether you're on a recent M-chip Mac or a slightly older Intel machine, there is now a native version of FotoSketcher built for you. Windows users are of course not forgotten - FotoSketcher 4.0 RC is also available for Windows (64-bit), better than ever.
Download
- Windows: https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.0_RC.zip
- macOS (Apple Silicon - M1 to M5): https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.0_RC_Apple.zip
- macOS (Intel): https://fotosketcher.com/beta/FotoSketcher_4.0_RC_Intel.zip
These are portable versions - no installer needed. For Windows, extract the zip and double-click
FotoSketcher.exe. For macOS, unzip, drag to your Applications folder (or run directly). If macOS warns that "the developer cannot be verified," just right-click the app icon, choose Open, and confirm.
14 artistic effects
FotoSketcher 4.0 RC ships with a full set of 14 effects, spanning pencil sketches, drawing effects, painting styles and photo filters:
Pencil Sketch
- Pencil Sketch 1 - classic edge-based pencil sketch with adjustable contrast and color tint
- Pencil Sketch 2 - stroke-based rendering with variable stroke size and density
- Pencil Sketch 3 - dynamic pencil effect using iterative directional strokes
Pen & Ink / Drawing
- Black & White - dramatic high-contrast ink rendering with tonal simplification
- Stippling - B&W stipple/dithering effect using the Atkinson algorithm
- Felt-tip pen - mimics the look of bold marker strokes
Painting
- Watercolor - smooth, flowing watercolor effect built on spoke-based rendering
- Oil Pastel - oil pastel brushwork using custom brush shapes
- Watercolor splashes - loose, expressive watercolor with directional splashing strokes
- Impasto brushstrokes - thick, textured paint with heavy impasto-style brushwork
- Smooth painting - soft, blended painting style, well suited to portraits and landscapes
- Stochastic Painting - a new effect with varied, randomised brushstrokes
Photo Filters
- Dream glow - the classic Orton soft-glow effect for a dreamy atmosphere
- Adjustments - vibrance, sharpness and structure enhancement for your image
All the other features
Beyond the effects themselves, FotoSketcher 4.0 includes a range of tools for creative control:
Manual Brush - paint any effect selectively onto your image using a brush, just as in the classic Windows version. Adjust brush size, softness and opacity, and apply any of the 14 effects only where you want them. This makes it straightforward to combine multiple effects on the same image.
Image History & Blending - a history gallery at the bottom of the screen lets you browse all your previous results. You can also select two images from the gallery and blend them together to create composite effects.
Crop & Rotate - straightforward tools to compose your image before or after applying an effect.
Preview with Zoom - a live preview of the selected effect, with the ability to zoom in and inspect fine details before committing to the full render.
Text Tool - add custom text anywhere on your image, with font, size and style options, and drag it into position.
Frames - a selection of ready-made frames to finish your artwork, including the brushstrokes frame. You can also load your own custom frames.
Textures - apply a texture overlay to give your image the feel of canvas, paper, or any other surface.
Custom Brushes - for the painting effects, you can load your own brush shapes (transparent PNG files, or brushes converted from Photoshop .abr files) to change the character of the painted output.
Combine Images - blend two images from your history together with adjustable opacity for layered composite artwork.
Split View - see the source photo and the result side by side for a before/after comparison.
Save, Load and Reset Parameters - your effect settings can be saved and reloaded at any time, so you can keep your favourite configurations for future use.
Drag & Drop - drag an image file straight into FotoSketcher to open it.
Use Result as Source (F12) - chain effects together by feeding the output of one effect back in as the new source. Combined with the manual brush, this opens up some interesting creative possibilities.
Printing support - print your artwork directly from FotoSketcher.
Alpha channel / Transparency - most effects preserve transparency, making it easy to composite your artwork on other backgrounds.
A word about this Release Candidate
As with any RC, there may still be a few rough edges. That said, I've been doing a lot of testing and I'm happy with the stability of this version. I plan to move to the official 4.0 release shortly - but your feedback over the next few days will be valuable in catching anything I may have missed.
Thank you to everyone who tested the Alpha, Beta 1 and Beta 2 versions and took the time to send in reports and suggestions. It really did help shape this release.
I hope you enjoy it - and as always, FotoSketcher is 100% free.
Happy FotoSketching,
David
16 comments:
Looking forward to trying it out. Thanks for your wonderful tools, David. I use them all the time as part of my pipeline.
(Mark) - Congratulations David! First impressions are very positive. Impressive !
Thank you, Glenn and Mark!
I'm happy that you enjoy using FotoSketcher :)
I only just discovered your program and I think it will help me — but I still need to try it out properly. I want to give my wife a picture I painted of her and would like to use your FotoSketcher tool as a rough template, so to speak. Let's see if it works. I'm optimistic. Thank you very very much! — (Best wishes, Kolya)
Thank you, Kolya! I think FotoSketcher may help you simplify the shapes to help you paint the portrait.
Hello, David!
I can only imagine the number of struggles a single developer can go through creating software like Fotosketcher on his own.
I use it mainly for inde 2D animation projects for how versatile it is for backgrounds and textures.
Version 4.00 RC is stable and works perfectly, but I was wondering if you could add back the batch processing UI window in the next official release! Thank you!
Thank you very much for your feeback!
Yes, batch mode is a priority for the following release (and scripting mode too).
Bonjour. Sur mon PC l'appli ne se lance pas..je la lance et le process demarre et tourne en boucle
Bonjour,
Merci pour votre retour. Il est possible que l'exécutable soit bloqué (peut-être par votre antivirus ?) car il n'est pas signé numériquement. Avez-vous décompressé complètement le fichier zip dans un dossier avant de lancer le programme ? Il est nécessaire que le fichier Skia4d.dll soit bien présent dans le répertoire où se situe FotoSketcher.exe. La version finale comprendra un setup qui gèrera tout cela.
Au besoin, n'hésitez pas à m'envoyer un mail à contact@fotosketcher.com
Bien cordialement,
David
recently sent you some coffee money after using the older version for awhile, tried the new version, looks great but does not want to perform on my windows 11 top end pc, processing works for never finishes, tried different images and art types but end up forcing prog to end, all still works on on previous version same images etc, best wishes Adrian
Tried the RC, The program launches, but it seems to freeze: I saw the splash screen, then the programs remains active on the task bar, but does not display any screen or any activity whatsoever. All previous versions of FotoSketcher worked fine
BTW, forgot to mention: The version I was trying to use was for Windows, and I am on Windows 11
Thank you very much for your feedback, Adrian and Riccardo! THis is very valuable as it is better to cacth these bugs before the official launch.
@Adrian: do you by any chance have a second display connected to your PC? In any case, I'll add some code to force the main form to display on the same monitor as the splash screen, just in case.
@Riccardo: this one is tricky. I will install another WIndows 11 instance in a VM so that I can test on a brand new OS install. I suspect a multi-thread issue in my code, but of course, on my PC it works fine ;)
To both of you, if you're ok exchanging by email for further debugging, can you send me a message at contact@fotosketcher.com ?
All the best,
David
Hi, David :) I have the exact same problem as Riccardo on Windows 11.
Thanks for the feedback. I think the problem you and Riccardo are experiencing is some kind of ghost main window issue (I think I have a workaround). As for the bug Adrian reported, it is probably due to a deadlock between the main UI thread and the effect processing threads. Of course, it works perfectly on my development PC ;) I've even installed a Windows 11 Virtual Machine on my PC, but could not reproduce the issue either...
I'll work on both bugs and will upload a new RC soon.
I've just uploaded a new RC version (same download link as previously) which hopefully could solve both bugs. Fingers crossed ;)
Post a Comment